The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was setup to provide children, in the developing world, with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves by creating a laptop with features created specifically for children.
This unique laptop, dubbed the XO, costs a mere $175 and is built from free and open-source software. The laptop sports a green casing, a liquid-proof keyboard and the Sugar operating system which is based on the popular Linux distro Fedora Core 6.
The OLPC project was founded by Nicholas Negroponte and globally the OLPC project is running a number of pilot projects, including in Africa. There are no official plans to bring the XO to South Africa yet however Antoine van Gelder, a South African developer contributing to the OLPC project, said that he hoped that a community of like-minded developers and educators would become involved in the project to get it adopted for use in South African schools.
In April the XO laptop made a very rare appearance at the Digital Freedom Expo in Cape Town and thanks to Tectonic and Twac I have included a demo video taken at the event so you can get a better feel for what all the hype is about.
For more information on the South African OLPC efforts visit the website at http://www.laptop.org.za/
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